509NorthStudio: I only ever got 99s when player with a great guild. I feel like kill speeds helps a TON.

Nasuuna1: I keep my utilities cds (kick, defensives, ect) in the same exact spot on every class, including across games (ffxiv, rift{sadge} fellowship)

The amount of brain power that saves is insane.

Khadgarrr: ABC always be COPING that you can't parse 99 cuz you don't get PI

throwaways4224: "Press your buttons good" Thanks Max

trm90: This tier specifically is a pain in the ass for parsing because there's SO much pad/add burst damage on most of the encounters right now. I feel like Paladins is the only real fight which doesn't have some kind of burst AoE gimmick.

wildcardns: Personal performance gets you in the 90s but if your team execution and kill time isn't on par you're not hitting 99s without external buffs.

Tillit_The_Necromancer: It feels like your parse isn't only really you. I've parsed suuuuper high when doing sales but way way lower during the same time of the season with the same toon raiding with my casual friends guild

finnjohnson1536: 99s require some level of cheesing mechanics to pad a players dps on most fights, rotationally optimal is 80 , it’s the little things about getting small dps gains out of the fight

PrimetimeZ: in retail youre not getting 99 parse unless youre getting pi and aug boost, most top parse are padded af

ИванМичурин-ч6у: Max, im sry, but you didnt answer the question :D

Warcraftlogs takes in consideration ONLY the final dps. This website doesnt care about the fight length and your actual perfomance.

You need:

-a perfect understanding of your class (the thing Max mentioned). Motsy though, a perfect understanding of an ENCOUNTER. Think when you need to press your cooldowns for your personal log needs, not for the raid needs.

-Short fight. As much short as you can. E.g. taking as much op geared people as you can. The chances of you getting a 99 with a shitty geared raid are close to a zero.

-BL from start. This skyrockets your overall dps, it WILL be higher. If you're not a devasitation, i dont know :D

-raid group playing for your logs. You stand and tunnel the boss. OR you are a prio to AOE the adds etc. Basicly, you dont do mechanics that require you to move, if that will not wipe the raid. If you're in a group that makes logs healers will heal through additional amage no prob.

-im agreeing on the latency question. It is almost always just irrelevant, people are just wanking on numbers "ooh im on 35ms instead of 100".

Also yes, making 99 logs is kinda toxic to the raid, but at one point you start to roll through the fights with such speed and knowledge that people just stop careing.

hotchrisbfries: The whole "ABC" = Always Be Pressing

Flau-h4b: It’s always be casting the correct buttons in your rotation and have kill times that are fast or still align with your cooldowns. Understanding your talents is vital, it helps you understand your rotation. Sims is a great source for information and optimizing gear. Warcraftlogs is great for checking openers, stats, buffs and even positioning if it can be relatable to how your guild does fights. There’s also some RNG with crits and procs and getting mechanics that hurt your ability to do maximum damage. It’s really just press your buttons correctly, know your kill times to plan your cooldowns ahead and move the minimal amount you need so you can keep casting.

tmgjurassic3738: It is really hard, the people that play at that level are so skilled.

tayntxe: "Just get better"

grahamvandyke: I've gotten multiple HoFs, CEs and x4 0.1% M titles playing at 200ms. It's tilting for sure but can play around it. I kinda like saying I'm playing with my own personal affix ;)

Byhythloh: It's so so much about the group your playing with. If your playing melee and your tanks positioning sucks, you ain't parsing well. I've done kills where I feel like I played absolutely flawlessly, not missing a single CD, and button, then look at the parse and it's like 75-80.

Xalexalexale: 95 is player skill, 99-100 is kt IMO

Jules666: These days, the game is so loaded into cooldowns that parsing comes down to maximizing CDs into the most targets. Dont miss CD casts, dont bungle the CD rotation, try to line up mechanics so you dont have movement or mechs whlle your CDs are firing. Non-cd rotation is almost irelevant in today's world unless it affects burst windows.

For fights with pad, it isnt worth caring about parses. WCL has to disable add damage in order to parse add fights without cheesing.

KidMoxie: Step 1: have a perfect comp that compliments your class's requirements.

Step 2: press your buttons good.

Step 3: everyone presses their buttons good too.

dirusj4006: People miss kill time. Boss kills must line up with your cooldowns and be no longer than that...

The most obvious in current content is the Bird. 1 phase egg vs 2 phase and there is no way to compare.

ant.johnstone: Good Player, Bad kill time = 90-95

Good player, Good kill time = 95-100

Bad Player, Bad Kill time <90

darkwing7780: these flights around silvermoon city are much more relaxing that doing laps around oribos xD

depressedpacito7024: A big part of parsing as well is knowing when to hold cds or blow your load. When I was a big parser in legion alot of bosses had mechanics that would make you swap priority targets, have a damage amp or overall downtime.

It's a weird combination of things that compound on top of things you already mentioned, this also includes potion usage

ethanomihombre: Honestly the best thing I've found for improving (outside of just learning the class baseline, and looking at logs/streams to see what people are doing specifically around and in their cds), is just doing a shitload of M . I went from purple parsing in raids to consistently 95 almost exclusively from pushing high keys. Just playing a ton when you're at the point where mobs/bosses live a long time really helps build good muscle memory. This is from a dps/tank perspective tho, idk if it works the same way for heals.

marton_horvath: "this will blow your mind" - proceeds to not blow anyones mind

IrrelevantViewer: To parse as a healer play with the warrior standing in fire trying to parse higher

menardyxiv: I'm glad Max nailed the true answer. I analyzed hundreds of logs for FF14 and the one main thing translates 1:1 to WoW: People focus waaaaaaaay too much on small optimisations rather than ABC.

There is a huge amount of midwits (or mid-parsers if you will) parsing green who love talking about "oh if I use this first or prepare my burst that way" when they are literally doing 80k instead of 100k simply from not keeping their GCD rolling for 20% of the time, because they are stunlocked by the boss mechanics or their rotation for moments at a time. All their micro-optimsation would bring them is 5k at best if they nailed it, and which is way harder than improving their GCD uptime.

The FF14 equivalent is stuff like positionals for those that care. Some abilities doing 5-10% more damage if you're on the side/behind the boss and people tunnelvisioning on hitting those while not pressing their GCD for >1sec losing 5x more damage from that than they gained.

This does not necessarily 100% apply to every single spec in WoW, e.g. energy-based classes can be in situations where pressing nothing is the optimal thing to do, either because there is nothing to press or because pooling energy is optimal.

Jun 01 2026

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